For the cultivation of animal cells or animal tissues, it has been found that the addition of animal serum, as a cell growth factor, to the basal medium is essential. With the advances in recent years in cytology and immunology as well as in large-scale animal cell culture techniques, the demand for serum is markedly increasing.
Important criteria in using animal sera as a cell growth additive include the species and age of the animals whence the sera is derived, as well as any presence of contaminant microorganisms, cytotoxic substances, antibodies, growth-inhibiting substances, and the like. The cost and labor involved in obtaining such information are considerable and, moreover, the number or quantity of serum lots which can meet the high purity requirements is limited in many cases.
Among various sera, fetal bovine serum and neonatal bovine serum are being used with increasing frequency because of their superiority to other sera with respect to their cell growth promoting effect and their low content of undesired substances, among others. However, current problems with such sera include the difficulty in obtaining them, especially due to limited source availability and high costs.
In view of these circumstances, the present inventors conducted intensive studies and have now created a composition for cell cultivation which has excellent cell growth promoting effect and which contains no significant amounts of useless or harmful substances. The composition may be produced, with ease and at low cost, by using not only fetal or neonatal bovine serum as the starting material, but also adult bovine serum, or serum of some other animal species which is readily available for large quantity blood collection, such as horse, sheep or swine.